Opinion: The notorious case of Mayor Houde

John Kalbfleisch, Special to The Gazette11.14.2012

Maurice Duplessis, left, and Camillien Houde when the former was premier and the latter mayor of Montreal. Both began their careers as reformers, but their administrations became known for corrupt activity.
/ Elvis Anber

Mayoralty candidates Adhémar Raynault (left) and Camillien Houde speak to the Chambre de Commerce des Jeunes de Montréal on Dec. 8, 1944. Between them is a young Pierre Laporte, then an official of the Chambre de Commerce des Jeunes de Montréal, who went on to become a Quebec cabinet minister and was killed during the October Crisis of 1970.
/ Gazette File Photo

Montreal’s fiery mayor Camillien Houde argued against wartime registration, which, he said, was a prelude to conscription. He was arrested and detained without trial, and spent four years in an internment camp, only to be re-elected mayor in 1944.
/ Gazette File Photo

Mayor Camillien Houde (left) and President John A. Ross, (centre), of the Montreal Boys' Association, hold the city's deed to the land where the Point St. Charles boys' club will be built. Councillor Frank Hanley, M.L.A. on the (right) of John A. Ross. (photo date March 14, 1952)RIchard Arless Associates
/ Canada Wide Photo

MONTREAL — Gérald Tremblay is unique among Montreal mayors in resigning before his term was up. Testimony at the Charbonneau Commission alleged that he told aides he simply didn’t want to know about wrongdoing in public tendering. However, Tremblay has not been charged with anything, and at this point his protestations of innocence must be accepted.

Contrast this with the notorious case of Camillien Houde, the only other mayor to leave office prematurely and under a cloud. The issues then and now are quite different. And in Houde’s case, there was never any doubt as to his role in the events that ended his mayoralty.

Houde, mayor off and on since 1928, was well into a new term of office when Canada joined the war against Germany in September 1939. As fighting intensified the following spring, Ottawa stepped up its military recruiting.

Parliament also passed the National Resources Mobilization Act obliging virtually all Canadians 16 and over, male and female alike, to complete detailed registration forms. Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King promised this was simply to provide an inventory of the nation’s human resources, and had nothing to do with possible armed-forces conscription.

Most Canadians doubtless took this with a large grain of salt but, truth be told, didn’t mind. In Quebec, it was different. While not universal, there was wide opposition here to the idea of military service overseas. However, few were willing to say so publicly, and none so prominent as Camillien Houde.

On several occasions, Houde had already expressed his doubts about the war effort. He did so most notably on Aug. 2, 1940, while shooting the breeze with several reporters, including one from The Gazette. National registration, Houde told them, was a certain forerunner of conscription.

The Gazette reporter duly submitted a story, and was surprised a little later when it was returned to him. It had been rewritten as a formal statement by Houde, with the added declaration that the mayor himself would not register and was urging fellow Montrealers not to do so, either. The reporter asked Houde to sign the statement, which he did.

The Gazette, which loathed the mayor, was setting a trap. It was a trap, however, that Houde recognized and willingly walked into.

The statement, together with a blistering editorial condemning Houde’s defiance of the law, created a sensation when they appeared in the early edition of Aug. 3. The censor – a war was on, remember – ordered Gazette presses halted on grounds that the statement was seditious, but not before thousands of copies had hit the street.

In his statement, Houde declared he knew “full well what I am doing … and to what I expose myself.” Still, we might never know whether he regarded himself as a genuine political martyr, willing to go to jail for his beliefs, or as someone whose undoubted popularity would protect him from arrest, only to discover he had gone too far. In any event, too far he had gone and arrested he was.

A little before midnight on Aug. 5, Houde, his secretary and his wife were tidying up some business at city hall. They didn’t know that a team of RCMP and provincial police officers was waiting outside.

Houde emerged first and was promptly arrested. His wife and secretary, who had hung back, saw nothing; they found out what was going on only when a night watchman rushed back inside to inform them.

Houde was whisked away to the Place d’Armes post office for questioning before being driven off to the Petawawa army base in Ontario. There, and later at a camp in New Brunswick, he was interned without trial for the next four years. The Defence of Canada Regulations meant that, as an internee, he was automatically stripped of the mayoralty.

In fact, he had been effectively deposed as mayor some months before. In May 1940, Montreal’s finances were in appalling shape, and Quebec transferred the city’s administration to a commission chaired by municipal civil servant Honoré Parent. The arrangement would last for the next four years. Houde — and later his successor, Adhémar Raynault, elected by voters in December 1940 — were reduced to little more than impotent figureheads.

Houde proved to be a model prisoner and a source of laughter for his fellow internees, many of whom were unoffending German or Italian immigrants. He was set to work sawing wood, and in due course trimmed nearly 100 pounds from the 240 he was packing on arrival. (After his release, the lost embonpoint quickly returned.)

By the summer of 1944, the tide of war was flowing strongly against the Axis powers, which did nothing to diminish the embarrassment Houde’s internment was creating for Ottawa. On Aug. 16 that year, he was finally released.

Some 10,000 cheering Montrealers greeted him that evening as he stepped down from the train in Central Station. Thousands more lined the streets as his car slowly made its way to the family home on Rue St. Hubert, where yet another throng awaited. Houde was back.

While he was interned, Houde had made reference to how he had lost his mayor’s stipend of $20,000 a year. “But,” he added with his famous laugh, “I can get 20 cents a day as mayor of my hut in Petawawa. And once I get out of here, you can bet the people of Montreal will see to it that I get my job back.”

And so it was. Late in 1944, unsinkable as ever, he was again elected mayor, defeating his opponent Raynault.

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